A no-holds-barred AMA to get all the answers a first-time Lioness user is dying to know. (Updated November 2021)
By Kate Delgado, featuring Liz Klinger (CEO & Co-Founder of Lioness)
When I unboxed my Lioness Vibrator, I had two thoughts:
- This is the cutest, sleekest rabbit vibrator I have ever owned.
- Where do I start?
With its minimal design, the Lioness did not look like what I imagined when I thought of a “smart vibrator.” Where were all the gadgets? Surely a moderately sized vibrator that was supposed to teach me how to have better orgasms should have some sort of complexity to it, right?
Wrong.
After my first foray with the Lioness Vibrator, there was no denying that orgasms were going to come easily. I lasted a whopping 2 mins and 49 seconds with the actual sex toy and found my original questions answered completely.
But masturbating with the Lioness goes beyond each session. Once I opened the app and synced my session, I found I had a few more questions!
So, like any good amateur Sexual Scientist would do, I took my questions straight to the source: Liz Klinger, CEO & Co-founder of Lioness.
Whether you’re interested in purchasing a Lioness, or have one in the mail on its way to you, I highly encourage reading through my questions before giving your own smart vibrator a whirl.
A Rabbit Vibrator with One Motor?
K: I’m very used to having two motors in my rabbit vibrators. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the point of a vibrator was to vibrate inside the vagina. Is the one motor a technical choice or something else?
L: Some of the original rabbit vibrators were designed with all sorts of fancy movements, including ones that rotate internally.
When originally developing the Lioness Vibrator, we worked with hundreds of different testers. We found that, at least with vaginal stimulation, the shape of the product and how you move it (as in manually moving the device by thrusting, grinding, rotating, etc.) usually matters more than whether it vibrated or rotated on its own.
Also, some people don’t like any internal vibration because it feels uncomfortable or distracting. Ultimately, we removed the second motor in favor of putting in a better battery (for extended battery life) and to keep the sensor data cleaner.
A Vibrator with Adjustable Vibrations?
K: Full disclosure, being confronted with a motor that allows me to choose my own vibration settings took me off guard (and angered the feminist in me).
Here I was, living my life, totally accepting that my vibrators were made with the “right” settings. I had even experienced discomfort with other rabbit vibrators because the clitoral nub’s vibrations simply hurt.
Now that I have more control over my vibrator, I really want to maximize my ability to tailor my Lioness’s settings tome, but I’m not sure where to start. Any tips?
L:The speed dial control and customizations are magical! My best suggestion is to start with the default settings and see what you like. From there, you can fine-tune your settings to whatever you prefer.
You can also test different settings on the fly with the Live View feature by tuning the vibration at a moment’s notice through the app.
And if you want to try other external toys or even just focus on g-spot stimulation only, you can set your vibration to 0 (off) and do that, too!**
** I have since given this a try and it changed my experience with the Lioness completely! Now I can use external stimulation to “get in the mood” while still measuring my body’s response without using the clitoral nub or vibration. I highly recommend giving this a try!
Using the Lioness Vibrator to Masturbate Better?
K:Are there any simple steps I can take towards leveraging my data for my own pleasure? How can I use what I see now to have better orgasms later?
L: As you use Lioness over time, you’ll start to get a pretty good sense of what your pleasure looks like. You’ll get a better sense even faster if you add different notes to your experience (easiest via the app) so you can look back and remember how you were feeling/what you did weeks, months, or even years ago.
As you use it in different scenarios (different moods, alone or with a partner, with alcohol, with CBD or cannabis, during changes in menstrual cycle, etc) you may start to notice your pleasure feeling different, and then you can go back to the app and see whether something has changed in the way you use Lioness or how your body reacted.
Basically, you can start noticing some of the nuances that may be affecting your pleasure — some things might be more obvious than others. And you can start tracking what were your best sessions and what made those experiences great so you can recreate them again and again.
For example, my co-founder has even noted that she can see changes in her pleasure if she had coffee or not that day while I haven’t seen that difference (or maybe I’m just really addicted to coffee or have high tolerance). But I think that example is a testament to how we’re all different, and some things can affect us more than others.
There are also filters and heatmaps so you can see the frequency of use during different times and days of the week. You can filter and see, for example, when did you have your best sessions and when were your meh sessions.
One person’s golden hour may be Wednesday evening, but another person may be Saturday at 2 am. Again, this lets people dive into their own data to learn what works for them, specifically.
There are even the occasional stories that are completely unexpected. One of our early users had a concussion from a sports-related injury and was able to see the effects of it through her orgasm data — and then even see some of her recovery as her orgasm data returned back to her “normal.”
For her, seeing “shitty orgasms” (her words, not mine) helped her realize how serious the injury was and convinced her to sit out of her sport a while longer to recover, which she may have not done otherwise, especially given the pressure of professional sports.
When you’re done geeking out over data, you can also use live view to visualize your orgasm in real-time, check out some of the sex guides or even participate in scientific research on a variety of topics that are always changing.
What Does an Orgasm Look Like?
K: Towards the end of my session, my pelvic floor showed more pressure (aka, the circle was really small); did I have an orgasm? It never really looked “rhythmic” like the app mentioned. Am I mistaking what I thought was an orgasm for something else?
L: Good question! For the folks out there new to this, the above graph represents pelvic floor movement over a period of time (seconds) during a masturbation session. An orgasm is characterized by a particular pattern of pelvic floor contractions (1-2hz) and is a specific rhythm that cannot be replicated consciously because it’s too fast and regular.
Looking at this chart specifically, it looks like the orgasm happened near the 120-second mark — it’s that larger motion at the end of the session. We call this pattern a “Volcano” pattern because, on a chart like this, it looks a bit like a volcanic eruption.
If you “detrend” it (a fancy word for flattening the curve) you’ll see that it will look more like a wave that is rhythmic at a rate that’s characteristic of an orgasm. It is harder to see because the general curve is also going up and down a large amount, but if you zoom in on the chart and take a closer look (we always recommend that, especially for longer sessions!) that’s what you’d see!
Visualizing Orgasms?
K: I also love the hotspot visual! Could you tell me a bit more about what I'm seeing?
L: Sure! So the hotspot feature uses an algorithm based on over 100,000 anonymized user sessions and shows areas where you may have had an orgasm or experienced heightened arousal.
And the more you use your Lioness, the more smarter it gets at highlighting those key moments in your graphs!
So there you have it! The Lioness Vibrator—in all its one-motor glory—is a great tool for answering three very important questions:
- Did I have an orgasm?
- How do I have better orgasms?
- What happens when I try [________]?
Ready to check out The Lioness Vibrator for yourself?
Lioness is the first and only vibrator that helps you improve your orgasms.
The world’s most advanced vibrator. Precision sensors let you literally see your arousal and orgasm. Experiment, understand yourself, and have better orgasms—after all, as the saying goes, “never measured, never improved.”
Click here to learn more about the Lioness.
